Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

school. He is now ready for that advanced work of grace, i.e., sanctification, putting him far out in
advance of his dispensation, complimenting him with bona fide membership in the Pentecostal
church many centuries in anticipation. Behold, he sees a thorn-bush enveloped in lambent flame, yet
not consumed. It is the vivid symbol of the fiery baptism, then and there sanctifying and filling his
own soul. After forty years, his elder brother Aaron, in a similar manner participant of God’s
preparatory school, also joins Moses at the burning bush.
31-33. Out of the burning bush Jehovah now commissions the sons of Amram to go and preach
to the Pharaohs and princes of Egypt. Even the earth in that august presence is so sacred that sandals
must be removed from their feet. The Arabs in that country still adhere pertinaciously to that precept,
positively requiring me to take off my shoes every time I entered the holy mosque.
34. “Seeing I have seen the affliction of my people, who are in Egypt, and have heard their
groaning, and come down to deliver them; now come hither, I will send thee into Egypt.” The divine
economy, God’s method with man and the idiosyncrasies of salvation, is the same in all ages and
dispensations. Why did not God deliver Israel out of bondage at an earlier date? Because they had
not gotten so tired and sick of their bondage as to make them groan under the task-masters and cry
to God for deliverance. The task-masters are evil habits. The reason why the people are not delivered
from them is because they are not so sick and tired as to groan under the intolerable burden of sin
and cry piteously for deliverance. Whenever you get so awfully tired of sin as to loathe and groan
at its very mention and cry unto God for deliverance, He is sure to come down and deliver you. We
live in an age characteristic of superficiality in every respect. This grievous superficialism has almost
obliterated the very memory of the mourner’s cry and groan, and the wrestling altars, which in
former years I everywhere saw and heard. Good Lord, bring back the old-time power.
THE CHURCH.
36-38. “This is the one who is in the church in the wilderness along with the angel speaking to
him in Mt. Sinai and with our fathers.” As ecclesia, the word constantly used by the Holy Ghost for
church, from ek, “out,” and kaleoo, “call,” simply means “the called out,” i.e., all the people in all
ages who have responded to the call of the Holy Ghost, come out of the world and separated
themselves unto God, therefore we find the church in the world from the days of Abel. Dispensations
have changed, but the church never. The birth of the Spirit per se takes you out of the world and
makes you a member of the church, though in the middle of a desert, or tossed mid-ocean, a
thousand miles from a church edifice, a preacher, or a baptismal font, none of which ever did have
anything to do with church membership, being only symbolic, indicative and catechetical. Another
work of grace, so prominent in the New Testament as well as the Old, is sanctification for every
church member. For this work the Holy Ghost says hagiadzoo, from a, “not,” and gee, “the world.”
Hence it means to take the world out of you. Therefore these two works so plain and clear,
regeneration taking you out of the world and constituting you a true member of God’s church in
spiritual infancy, and sanctification, taking the world out of you, promoting you out of spiritual
infancy into spiritual adultage, thus qualifying you for every office of the church to which the Holy
Ghost may call you. Good Lord, help us all to be satisfied with God’s Word, come back to New
Testament simplicity, losing sight of those human ecclesiasticisms which through the chicanery of
Satan and carnal leaders have so covered up the church in the rubbish of Ashdod and the